It's not uncommon here to get chicken or beef pot pies, which are miniature pie crusts filled with thick stew-like meat and vegetables, then topped with more pie crust. You can get them in the frozen food aisle, though I've never seen the proper crusts or pans to make them at home, which makes me sad.

From the pictures I've seen those are a much lighter, flakier pastry, right? Afraid I only know how to make shortcrust, so I can't help there.

I did make normal shortcrust meat pies in cupcake tins once for 'individual-sized' pies, so they were probably like shortcrust versions of pot pies.

I'd be kind interested to go to a Ren Faire, except I'm worried it might be a little like the last time I was in the states when we went to some kind of castle-themed fast food place and the servers kept coming out with all of the 'funny American is clueless on UK history' stereotype stuff that made me a little embarrassed for them. Literally 'do you know the Queen' kind of things.

I mean, I guess I know a similarly small amount about, say, the US Civil War, but I like to think I am more cognisant of my ignorance.

It's not uncommon here to get chicken or beef pot pies, which are miniature pie crusts filled with thick stew-like meat and vegetables, then topped with more pie crust. You can get them in the frozen food aisle, though I've never seen the proper crusts or pans to make them at home, which makes me sad.

From the pictures I've seen those are a much lighter, flakier pastry, right? Afraid I only know how to make shortcrust, so I can't help there.

I did make normal shortcrust meat pies in cupcake tins once for 'individual-sized' pies, so they were probably like shortcrust versions of pot pies.

I'd be kind interested to go to a Ren Faire, except I'm worried it might be a little like the last time I was in the states when we went to some kind of castle-themed fast food place and the servers kept coming out with all of the 'funny American is clueless on UK history' stereotype stuff that made me a little embarrassed for them. Literally 'do you know the Queen' kind of things.

I mean, I guess I know a similarly small amount about, say, the US Civil War, but I like to think I am more cognisant of my ignorance.

Our Ren Faire is so much better than a place like that. Most of the people who work there as character actors or entertainers are actual history buffs. And there's more than a few Anglophiles thrown in for good mix.

Looking it up, shortcrust is probably what they use for pot pies. It's not really all that flaky, it's usually pretty dense to hold in all the delicious meats and sauces. Cupcake tins would be a bit smaller than the ones I usually see, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to try that. It could end up being delicious, I'll have to try it sometime.

An Aussie meat pie usually has twin kinds of pastry. A kind of short crust which uses lard instead of butter which makes it dense and hard so you can grip it in one hand without bending it. The upper crust is usually a puff pastry, but my favorite pie topping is mashed potato which goes all hard and crispy.

We have pot pies quite a bit at home because they're easy, just filling and pastry on top. I make chicken and leek, DH makes beef and burgundy. But the best pies we have are the shepherds pies we make with leftover roast lamb. We get a leg of lamb that's a bit too big for us, roast it, eat what we can and use the rest the next day for pies. Magnificent.

I can make pastry, but DH says I make it too thick. I usually use butter but I also have a recipe for olive oil pastry that's not bad. Pastry does work best with butter though, the olive oil lacks crumb lines and elasticity.

Our Ren Faire is so much better than a place like that. Most of the people who work there as character actors or entertainers are actual history buffs. And there's more than a few Anglophiles thrown in for good mix.

Well if I get a chance I should try to visit one.

We don't have Ren Faires as such, but we do have several castles/ruins you can visit where part of the day is that there are people in costume and character to entertain and educate - mostly for the kids.

There's also the Leeds Armouries, a museum of war and weaponry through the ages, that stages jousts in the summer. But members of the public do not dress up or be in character at these events.

I guess the closest would be war reenactments, which I understand the US has as well, but ours tend to be further back in history so can include similar costumes/characters to a Ren Faire.

Also in Nebraska they have Runzas which are sort of similar. I found a recipe for them years ago.Ground/minced beef browned with chopped onions and shredded cabbage. Can also put a little cheese in it. I think the recipe that I use to have used "bang"biscuits - refrigerated tube biscuits. Specifically Grands.

As far as portable stuffed foods, I'm much more familiar with kolaches (sweet or savory, Czech in origin but expanded upon a great deal in Texas) and empanadas than pasties or hand pies, though I've had them all.

For my money, empanadas win every time. There were pig-shaped ones filled with pumpkin or apple filling that I just loved from the grocery store (minus, for some reason, the caraway seeds in the dough sometimes), and I've made both sweet and savory ones.

I don't eat meat, but I did have a few options from the supposedly authentic Aussie-style pie place in my old city and found the dough ratio really unpleasant. The crust probably has to be thick for them to be portable, but I didn't like it that thick. Maybe I'm just used to thin pie crusts.

This is the kind of pie I'm used to at home. I never found anything like it in the USA, including at a Scottish Highland games that had "Scottish" food I had never seen or heard of before. (More points of because the band they had playing was Irish, not Scottish!)

Pasties are found here and there in Wisconsin; Mineral Point in particular had a lot of Cornish miners and there is or was a company based out of the Milwaukee area which makes pasties. Frozen ones. I bought them now and again.

Here in the UK the classic is of course the cornish pasty which is shaped kind of like a croissant and contains a fairly dryish meat mixture with potato, onion, and often peas, swede or other diced vegetables. A lot of places also serve flat, rectangular pasties containing beef chunks in gravy, and increasingly there are other flavours such as chicken and mushroom or cheese and onion.

I think I saw the guy on Man vs Food trying an American meat pasty, and he put ketchup on it, which I found bizzare and offputting.

I would put tomato sauce on a meat pie, sausage roll, or any meat-based pasty. Seems perfectly normal and delicious to me.

An Australian meat pie is fully contained in pastry (so, not a pot pie) and most commonly contained beef chunks in gravy. YUM-MO.